The bid sat on the kitchen table like a quiet animal: folded, substantial, and waiting. The pages were heavy with numbers that had been ground down to make sense—the cost of materials, the contingency line, the labor hours, the insurance riders. We’d printed the permit copies twice and put them in clear sleeves. We’d laminated references and stapled photographs into a tidy portfolio. The whole thing smelled faintly of printer ink and sawdust, like the two halves of our life pressed together.
Mark wound the elastic band twice around the packet, then looked up at me with the half-smile that meant he was trying to steady both my hands and his. “Ready?” he asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” I said. My voice felt bright in my own ears, the buzz of nerves tucked under it like a live wire.
We drove to
